Internet Collective Action is people organizing in a nonhierarchical manner to accomplish a particular goal. The reward is in the doing, and how much or how little anyone participates is completely voluntary, depending on their abilities and commitment to the goal. By this process amazing things can be accomplished. ICA will grow so long as the Internet is free. http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm is an example of ICA.

"As I have argued elsewhere,
the dominant strategic thinking within the reform movement was
initially pessimistic about the viability and consequences of protest.
Grievances were so deep, they feared, that mass mobilization could stir
up emotions, spawning radicalism and providing hard-liners with an
excuse for repression, possibly leading to civil war.
Each time
conservatives cracked down on reformist activists and blocked their
initiatives within the state, the reformist leadership and
intelligentsia called on the supporters to be calm. For example, when a
prominent reformist leader was arrested, a reformist newspaper wrote
that the arrest 'might be a plan to agitate emotions, and we should not
give any opportunity for repression. Thus, at this time, any [protest]
gathering will serve the interests of authoritarians.'
One
leading reformist organization even coined the term 'active tranquility'
for this strategy, which calls reformists to keep pushing for their
demands but avoid confrontation, with a view to gain the trust of
hard-liners. Reformists also saw the ballot box as the main pathway to
peacefully push for political change and incompatible with mass
mobilization.'"

So when your natural allies don't want to join your protest, what can you do? I would also like to remind you that the Philippines reformed due to street protests. Also, it's a good time to read Martin Luther King's Letter from Birrmingham Jail.

"While Rep. Chaffetz’s bill passed the Natural Resources Committee in
2014, it had never passed the House or reached the president’s desk.
That likely would have changed during this Congress, where the House and
Senate Republican majorities are ideologically opposed to the federal
government. The only thing standing in the way of the sale of those 3.3
million acres of land that belong to you, me and every other American —
and the only thing that stands in the way of the next similar bill
becoming law — is the willingness of ordinary people to call their
members of Congress and even leave their homes to attend a rally with
one strong message: Kill this bill.

This is not to discount the power of less focused public dissent. The
Women’s March against President Trump generated such overwhelming
public support in Washington and around the world that the White House
still busies itself telling everyone how unimportant it was. That kind
of protest will continue to have force and meaning throughout the coming
Trump years.
But protesting a specific bill in no uncertain terms can produce
results. At a time of unified Republican government, that kind of
protest — which has already succeeded in this new Congress — may be the
most potent legislative tool the American people possess."

From one who knows, what to do in face of a horrible congressional bill.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

"Even for those who did not assemble on either
weekend, the pictures carried special power. Amplified on social media
and echoing across every TV network, they suggested something larger
afoot, something democracy-defining. “Something’s happening out there,”
Ana Navarro, the Republican never-Trumper and television pundit, declared on Twitter.

Something
sure is. We’re witnessing the stirrings of a national popular movement
aimed at defeating the policies of Mr. Trump. It is a movement without
official leaders. In fact, to a noteworthy degree, the formal apparatus
of the Democratic Party has been nearly absent from the uprisings.
Unlike the Tea Party
and the white-supremacist “alt-right,” the new movement has no name.
Call it the alt-left, or, if you want to really drive Mr. Trump up the
wall, the alt-majority.

Or call it nothing. Though
nameless and decentralized, the movement isn’t chaotic. Because it was
hatched on social networks and is dispatched by mobile phones, it
appears to be organizationally sophisticated and ferociously savvy about
conquering the media.

Over two weekends, the
protests have accomplished something just about unprecedented in the
nearly two years since Mr. Trump first declared his White House run:
They have nudged him from the media spotlight he depends on. They are
the only force we’ve seen that has been capable of untangling his
singular hold on the media ecosystem."

I wrote about Anonymous in 2008 springing up apparently out of nowhere to take on Scientology. Again we have "leaderless" protests growing from public concern and confronting a problem of obvious concern to many. Organized online, without any hierarchy involved, unconcerned about established organization that isn't doing anything anyway, protesters by the hundreds of thousands move politics. Expect more of this.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

"Erica Chenoweth, a professor at the School of International
Studies at the University of Denver, has argued that social media is
helping dictators, while giving the masses an illusion of empowerment
and political worthiness. At a recent lecture at Columbia University, when asked for an
example where social media played a negative role in a social movement,
Chenoweth paused a little to finally say, 'what comes to my mind now is
Syria.' Indeed, social media hurt the Syrian uprising. It gave the
Syrian people the hope that the old dictatorship can be toppled just by
uploading videos of protests and publishing critical posts. Many were
convinced that if social media helped Egyptians get rid of Hosni
Mubarak, it would help them overthrow Bashar al-Assad. It created the false illusion that toppling him would be easy and doable."

I'll have to ponder this a while. I would assume Syrians would know more about their country than what they read on Facebook and not be swayed by information that contradicts their on-the-ground knowledge.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

"I love Twitter. I think about Twitter as the friend that’s always awake.
It’s why I tweet so much. I’m interested to see which of the platforms
will be the first one that allows people to build skills. Right now,
mostly, it’s about information sharing. We haven’t seen a platform
really be [about] skill building, so I’m hoping that’ll come next. It’s
been interesting to see Snapchat grow and change, [and] I think that in
the coming years we’ll see that. I’m not one of the people who is a
Twitter doomsday person. I think that we’ll see the golden days of
Twitter ahead.

I think that we have to be open to new ways of organizing and new
ways of building community. I’m mindful that we aren’t born woke,
something wakes us up, and for so many people, what woke them up was a
tweet or a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a picture. I never
criticize people who [others] deem to be Twitter activists, or hashtag
activists, because I know that telling the truth is often a tough act,
no matter where you tell that truth. I think that’s important. I think
that we’ll continue to see the platforms push and redefine the way we
organize.
In terms of the new organizing, you think about how you can use
people on Slack and mobilize them, you think about how we can spread
messages on Twitter. I think that we’re just at the beginning of seeing
the power of technology to really push in the social justice and the
equity space. I think that moving forward in terms of what the solutions
look like, I think we’ll see platforms like Twilio be really important.
I think we’ll see these sort of quieter, seemingly, platforms take a
primary role."

This is a great Q&A for a prominent activist of our time, reflecting on how technology works for activism, and what needs to be done to move forward from here.

Monday, November 21, 2016

"One
of the most consistent answers I got was that protesters should realize
that protests aren’t enough. There’s a real risk of catharsis being the
start and end of the resistance to Trump: Protesting feels good and
righteous, but if nothing comes after then it may not accomplish that
much. It’s key, therefore, to understand the limits of protests and to
put them in a broader activism context. 'There are some people that
think that protests solve everything; you just have a protest, it’s
going to make everything change,' said Fabio Rojas, a professor at
Indiana University and the author of From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline. 'That’s not true — it is a tool that does a very specific thing, and you have to understand that when you start out.'

Protests
are effective — sometimes very effective, in the case of big ones — at
drawing attention to a given cause, and all else being equal they have
an impact. 'There’s a lot of research showing that there is an effect of
protest on policy,' he said. 'If you protest rather than do nothing,
that does seem to attract attention, and that does seem to make
institutions lean in your direction.' But beyond that, it’s important,
Rojas said, to have a clear sense of what a given protest is for.' What are you really trying to accomplish with a protest? Are you
trying to influence a specific policy? Are you trying to build
solidarity within the movement? Are you trying to persuade people who
are watching the movement, or even trying to persuade people on the
other side of the movement?'”

What to protest about and what to do along with protesting seem to be 2 key parts of success.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

"During the heady days of revolution, social media seemed to unify
Egyptians across disparate ideological trends around a limited, shared
goal. That didn’t last. As time went on, social media encouraged
political society to self-segregate into communities of the like-minded,
intensifying connections among members of the same group while
increasing the distance among different groups."

"The mobilization of fear was concentrated more in the politically
activist communities than in the broader public. One of the most
striking findings in the statistical analysis is the extremely low
incidence of “fear basket” terms in the Couch Party cluster. Contrary to
the common portrayal of Egypt as a society consumed by fear and chaos
during this time, the apolitical group was not consumed by
fear, or at least not talking about it on Twitter. Instead, fear basket
terms seem to be most found within the activist cluster and the Islamist
cluster, the most politicized of the groupings."

So people form cliques. I see this every day on social media. But I guess that's their point - what happens to a revolution when the cliques start forming? Can you still maintain a revolution or is this a sign of the end?

Saturday, September 17, 2016

"While critics of Occupy took issue with it at the time for its lack
of specific demands, a clear organizational structure or strategies for
next steps, it has come to resonate politically, said Heather Gautney, a
sociology professor at Fordham University.
She pointed to Sanders' campaign, saying Occupy's injection of income
inequality into the discourse paved the way for the Vermont senator's
calls to get money out of politics, rein in Wall Street banks and
provide free public college education.
Nicholas Kiersey, a political science professor at Ohio University,
said Trump's political presence is part of Occupy's impact, as well.
'If Bernie Sanders represented a left-wing popular suspicion that had
felt all of a sudden very legitimate in expressing its grievances,
Trump, I think, represents the mirror of that from the right,' he said. 'They both, in a sense, have ridden the momentum of popular
dissatisfaction.'"

The concentration on the 1% vs. the 99% came from Occupy Wall Street. that is built into our political discussion now.

"As the months went by, the Bahraini government went about methodically
silencing voices of opposition and discontent. Today, there are
practically no opposition figures still free. Professor Valeri says that
the regime really started to crack down in earnest after the
legislative elections in 2014.

'Up until 2012, world powers like the United States and the United
Kingdom were pressuring Bahraini authorities to reform. But after 2012,
the US and the UK were under the impression that the Arab Spring
movement in Bahrain was over [Editor’s note: The Arab Spring movements
that took place in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya had all managed to unseat
their dictators by this point] and that all that was left of the
struggle were small skirmishes going on in some of the villages. The
diplomatic tone changed and these governments started saying that
Bahrain would undergo reforms but that it would be a slow process.

Then, in 2014, the US and the UK started pressuring the opposition
al-Wefaq party, the main Shiite group in the country, to participate in
the legislative elections. Al-Wefaq was trapped. If the group
participated in the vote, it would cut off its electoral base, which
wanted more radical reforms. However, if it refused to participate, then
then it would be accused of standing in the way of reconciliation. It
ended up choosing the second option. The Bahraini government took it as a
go-ahead to carry out a widespread crackdown on the legal opposition.'"

Saudi Arabia sent in vast numbers of troops to stop a peaceful protest.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

"So remember, the next time a demonstration stops your evening commute or
gets loud outside of your office window, protesters are not hoping to
raise your awareness or tug at your heartstrings. They are teaching you
of the deep political importance of being inconvenienced, and helping
you to get used to it."

The author kind of meanders a bit, but the main point is that inconveniencing others is a great method for forwarding your Just and Important Cause. She gives examples of the current pipeline standoff in North Dakota, where Native Americans are trying to block an oil pipeline to protect their water, and the takeover of a lot next to the notorious Homan Square police station in Chicago. These I would actually agree with, since they are directly confronting the group that is their concern.

But I strongly take issue with using this tactic to, say, shut down a major street corner in some city, where the geographic location and the people thus inconvenienced have nothing to do with what you are protesting. Wise protesting is very much tied up with not only your message, but in how you conduct yourselves and what you are doing. Your message is MUCH more clear when you are protesting at a location that points to your object of concern, when you are doing something that relates to your concern, and when you act in a way that shows you are respectful of your audience (that being everybody that you want to sway to your side). I fail to see how inconveniencing mere bystanders (and probably not even bystanders - simple ordinary people with NO connection to your cause) will bring anybody to your side, or make them want to listen to what you are complaining about.